Heading to Hedley May 2002
Trip started out Friday night to Copper Creek (AKA Placer Creek FSR Rec Site) which was busy by that time of the night. Placer Creek is the road to the south in the first real hilly sharp turn after leaving the east gate of Manning Park. We camped on the riverbank beside the bridge on the southwest side. We has some time before we were joined by other participants and used the small telescope we had to look for some stars in the bright clear sky. Greg joined camp with Matt riding navigator for him, around 11pm. We made a small fire as it had got mighty cold by that time, and sat around for a little bit shooting the breeze and roasting marshmallows. No one would believe me telling them marshmallow is actually a plant .. .. they found out later I was right .. .. just the fluffy white sugar things aren't 'real' marshmallows .
We turned in a short time later and when we awoke the next morning, we saw that Paul had joined our camp late during the night. Bradley made his trademark mcbradley biscuits with cheese and ham while we packed up for the days journey. We left camp about 930 heading south up the FSR towards the Placer-Belgie FSR intersection. We travelled along the Lower Placer-Belgie road taking a leisurely drive thru the area of the 2001 summer Forest Fire near Princeton. We started to get ansy thinking that Crawley's cabin may have been engulfed in the forest fire, but it was just spared by a few meters. Unfortunately some unscrupulous mushroom buyers had decided to spray paint the cabin to show others where they were - what a horrid fate for a cabin that had survived so many natural disasters to be defaced by a bunch of idiots some 100+ years later.
